What inspires you?

Your family? Money? The prospect of a long and fruitful life?

Boring! How cliché!

Chips Ahoy! has the right idea when it comes to inspiration because they’re only inspired by one thing this holiday season – Cookie Butter!

Some twenty years after the advent of pulverized Speculoos cookie spread, Chips Ahoy! is finally dipping its chips into the world of cookie butter with its new Chewy Chips Ahoy! Cookie Butter (Inspired.)

If you’re wondering what “Speculoos” means, it’s a portmanteau of the words “speculation” and “looky-loo.” Perhaps it’s best you stop being so nosy, you speculoos.

Actually, speculoos are thin spiced Belgian wafers and the centerpiece of cookie butter. I apologize for calling you nosy.

… but speaking of nosy – these Chips Ahoy! smell incredible!

I’ll be honest, Chips Ahoy! Cookies are a mixed bag for me, so I was a bit of a speculoo myself when I saw the folks at Mondelez tackling this flavor profile. The aroma instantly sold me. They smell like 25% gingerbread and 75% fresh pancakes. I’ve been huffing the sleeve for days. It’s getting weird.

Taste begins at your schnoz, right? Surely these scent-sations must taste amazing?

They taste pretty good, but dare I say uninspired?

It’s a nice random sweet cookie, but severely lacking cookie butter flavor.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with Biscoff cookies and know what they taste like. They have what I just call a “winter spice” flavor. It’s that concoction of every spice in your Lazy Susan – cinnamon, clove, cardamom, nutmeg, etc. Maybe not all, but you know what I’m saying. They’re delicious. I’m a big fan.

These Chips Ahoy! are tasty but… lack taste. They’re at most about 20% “cookie butter.” They don’t claim to use Biscoff or any cookie similar, but they don’t taste like ‘em anyway. They’re inspired by cookie butter in the same way this review I’m “writing” is technically inspired by the collective works of Bill Shakespeare.

The fatal flaw here is in the namesake – the ahoy… no, wait, the chips. Cookie Butter flavored cookies shouldn’t have chips, especially chips that are inexplicably white chocolate, I think? White chocolate inspired at least.

The white chips taste fine, but they’re unnecessary. There is a layer of inspiration in the middle of the cookie that has a little bit of a “gingerbready” flavor when isolated, but it’s no match for the overpowering chips. I guess you just can’t be Chips Ahoy! without chips, but then why do the white chips?

It’s weird — these don’t taste like they should, or like anything, really, and I still like them.

The best I can tell you is that the “holiday spice” flavor is there, but extremely muted. No one on Earth would ever guess “cookie butter” in a blind taste test. They’d probably say, “uhhh, cookie. Cookie flavor? It tastes like a cookie.” Did Chips Ahoy! just think cookie butter tasted like generic cookie?

There just wasn’t nearly enough inspiration with this flavor. The speculoos over at Chips Ahoy! should’ve probably just stuck to what they know. That said, it’s still a good cookie-tasting cookie.

Purchased Price: $4.97

Size: 9.9 oz

Purchased at: Walmart

Rating: 6 out of 10

Nutrition Facts: (2 Cookies) 140 calories, 7 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 115 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of total carbohydrates, 12 grams of sugar, 0 grams of dietary fiber, and 1 gram of protein.